Comments
by Scoper...
Squelching the Right
To the editorial page
editor and the publisher of The Boston Globe:
Are you proud of yourselves?
You've managed to silence
the one columnist who consistently challenges -reasonably and accurately
- your pantheon to liberal bias that is Beantown's major daily. And
you've done it with the flimsiest of trumped-up allegations, smearing a
man's good name in the process.
On Friday, July 8, you suspended
Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby for four months, accusing him of "serious journalistic
misconduct." Oh, you were careful not to use the word "plagiarism,"
possibly fearing quite justifiable retaliation in civil court. But
you can't hide your real agenda. You wanted him gone because he didn't
toe the party line, and you were too cowardly to admit it.
What was Jeff Jacoby's crime?
He wrote a column - one of more than 600 that he's written for your paper
- about the signers of the Declaration of Independence, and the great hardships
many of them endured in the years immediately following the Revolution.
(After all, their names on the parchment were treason to the Crown.)
I read that column, and found
it a wonderful tribute to the bravery of the Founding Fathers, a perfect
piece for the Fourth of July weekend. Little did I, or many others
know that it would be Jacoby's last column for the Globe, maybe ever.
A four month suspension? You might as well have fired him.
And you probably will, once the heat dies down a little.
Where is this "serious misconduct?"
The Washington Post reports you accuse him of "borrow(ing) without attribution."
But what he "borrowed" was American History, material in the public domain,
after first checking his facts. Crafting a column on such an old
theme, it didn't occur to Jacoby to mention that others had written on
the same topic years earlier. Most people knew that already.
Yet you hung him for it. But no wonder you avoided the "p" word.
There was none, and had you accused him of it, you could have gotten your
Boston butts sued off.
Under the same circumstances,
would Ellen Goodman have been burned? We both know the answer.
I will concede, though, that no one at the Globe but Jacoby would have
written a column praising the Founding Fathers in the first place.
Revisionist liberals don't consider them worthy of honor. They'd
rather use the freedoms that others died for to blast those very people
for being "Euro-centric" and not "multicultural" enough.
Ironically, I regularly read
several Globe columnists, including Goodman, because I'd rather be exposed
to a variety of viewpoints, not just those that validate what I might already
believe. Maybe that's why this sad affair turns my stomach.
But this won't die quietly.
Matt Drudge has pulled his Boston Globe link off his million-hit-a-day
web site in protest. The venerable Jewish World Review has published
an editorial entitled: "I Am Outraged -- and You Should Be, Too!"
Joseph Farah, editor of World Net Daily, is offering his services should
Jacoby wish to pursue a lawsuit against the Globe and its parent company,
the New York Times. And no doubt the calls, faxes and e-mails are
keeping a lot of your people busy.
You got what you wanted.
You blew off the only writer who provided any semblance of balance whatsoever
to your editorial page. The funny part is (if the word "funny" fits)
is that I'm not even a classic conservative. Neither side truly embraces
the level of individual freedom that I revere, if only in theory.
But I've discovered one major difference between the two over the years.
Conservatives tend to favor rational, if lively, debate. Liberals
would rather cause the opposition to simply disappear. I can guess
why, and you've provided me with the best example yet.
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